Time Zones in PHP, Date, MySQL...?

Question

I am trying to figure out how to display time in PST on my php site. I have been putting in timestamps in the MySQL Database with NOW() and calling them like this:

date("m/d/y g:i a", strtotime($ref['lastupdated']))

However, the server time is in Central and However, as the website is geared towards people in the PST time zone. Basically it needs to show in PST. Is there a way I could do this - like, take that value and subtract 2 or something? Any ideas?

I'm not sure also if I need to go about this the PHP route or if the problem, rather, could be solved via MySQL.

Any ideas are appreciated - thanks!

$query = "SELECT refid, CONCAT(fname,' ',lname) refname, email, street, city, state, zip, interestlvl, status, added, lastupdated FROM referrals WHERE affid='$affid' ORDER BY added DESC;";

$result = mysql_query($query) or die("Query Failed: ".mysql_errno()." - ".mysql_error()."<BR>\n$Query<BR>\n");


    if ($result) {
            while ($ref = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC))      {
                echo '


    <td bgcolor="#EFEFEF" class="list">'.
        date_default_timezone_set('America/Chicago');
        $date = new DateTime($ref['lastupdated']);
        $date->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('America/Los_Angeles'));
        $date->format('m/d/y g:i a')
        .'</td>';
    }
    }

Community · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-17 19:32:19Z

3

$date = new DateTime($ref['lastupdated']);
$date->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('America/Los_Angeles'));
echo $date->format('m/d/y g:i a');

given that PST is America/Los Angeles. You have to make sure that date.timezone is set to the correct timezone for Central. This can either be accomplished via the php.ini or via date_default_timezone_set().

The code then treats your incoming string $ref['lastupdated'] as being in the default timezone (Central) and converts the date-time into the America/Los_Angeles timezone.

edited Nov 17, 2023 at 19:32

CommunityBot

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answered Feb 4, 2011 at 18:17

Stefan Gehrig

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5 Comments

Sara Over a year ago

This works great, but sometimes I get the value returned like this: 102/04/11 11:56 am . There is an odd "1" appearing from no where. I've checked that it's not in the HTML. Any clue? Thank you!

Sara Over a year ago

2011-02-04 13:56:44 is the value from MySQL. Then I get 102/04/11 11:56 am from the code. :O Even if I change it to like, M/d/y I get 1Feb/04/11

Stefan Gehrig Over a year ago

Please show all of the relevant code... I highly doubt that the snippet above produces this output.

Sara Over a year ago

Sorry, I posted the relevant code in the original thread, as the comment was formatting it weird!

Sara Over a year ago

I got it! I was putting an echo in an echo. I'm sorry for that! Thank you SO much!

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